Joshua Schroeder is convinced of his actions. While trying to ensure due process for a client of his before the latter was deported to Laos in late May, he filed one habeas corpus petition after another — in courts across the country, even in Guam — following the silent maze laid out by prosecutors in Donald Trump’s government to sabotage the legal defense of migrants in active removal proceedings. His conscience and commitment drove him to exhaust every possible avenue, even if he had little hope that his motions would succeed. In the end, as could be expected under the current ruthless immigration policy, they did not. But Schroeder was in for a surprise nonetheless: in one of the prosecutors’ responses, there was also a motion seeking sanctions against him. They accused Schroeder of deliberately wasting the courts’ time and money.
As far as anyone knows, Schroeder is the first attorney to face such an accusation, stemming from a presidential memorandum signed in March directing officials “to seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States.” There is no precedent for this, but Schroeder — who is also a legal scholar and author of treatises on the United States’ founding laws — places his case within a broader attack on the republic’s values that the current Trump administration, through its Department of Justice, is carrying out.
“I’m just one attorney, and no attorney can withstand the government if they really wanted to do something to you. It’s really rare for the government to make this choice because it’s so consequential. But at the same time, there are a lot of odd things about this sanctions motion. For one thing, it cites a memo of the president, which seems to indicate that it’s not an independent choice of a lawyer to make the sanctions motion. Usually it would be. The idea that they’re following a direct message from the president, a political person, is extremely dangerous or strange. It’s hard to even put your mind around exactly what that means,” Schroeder says in a video call with EL PAÍS from Los Angeles.
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